Some time ago I ordered some 30 B. krataios. They arrived in a quite good shape, looking exellent after one week, a first male brooding. I had my doubts about the ID, thought them to look more and more like B. dimiata.

and then within some hours – I was absent, out for work – most of them and a some Kottelatlimia hypporhynchos stocked with them died of an infection.

I could stabilise a rest of 8 specimen, looking fine after week. And looking as B. dimidiata

A friend passed and took them with him, a brooding male resting in the tank for a day or two.

They looked ok for a week and then went down with the same infection: white blotches, fungus.

The resting male developped extremly well in a new tank. One of the fry seems to have survived in the old tank where I had made a complete change and placed the incoming B. simplex.

Aye these are dimidiata for sure. Not sure they really occur together though; will have to check the krataios description. If they do what Colin says makes sense – unfortunately. I hope they’ll be okay again soon.

Should be solid then, if the IDs were made correctly… /smile.gif” style=”vertical-align:middle” emoid=”:)” border=”0″ alt=”smile.gif” /> Good alternatives are glassworms, mosquito larvae, Mysis, Artemia and so on.

I rarely use frozen bloodworm, they are 99% water according to the packaging of some companies. I always prefer to use food that I have either reared myself (and feed the livefood before feeding to the fish)

Thanks for the ID.I’ve read about the mixing of the shipments, Colin. Open question is for me, if a part was krataios as listed. Bloodworms: we discussed this almost 30 years ago, about living ones of course. some were talking about damages in B. splendens after feeding them. No clear diagnosis. I never had problems. In my tanks it’s an intermezzo in the nutritional protocol for the other reasons you mentioned. I prefere Culex for conditioning, living and frozen.In this case: first time this male got them because I needed some pics down on the bottom in front with the “right” background. tended to stay in the not accessible background to feed on floating food.may be I get the opportunity to retry a shipment next weekcheers Charles

Colin, do you feed the gammarids to the fish when young or after the exoskeleton has developed? Asking as there’s a species living in with the Aphanius at the delta but we’re unsure if the fish are able to feed on them or not.

As for bloodworm, I’ve never experienced any issue and find that most fish will take frozen ones much more enthusiastically than Mysis, Artemia, etc., although I don’t doubt what you two are saying. Are live ones also lacking in nutritive content or does the irradiation and freezing process remove some of the ‘good stuff’?

Re- bloodworm. I have never had a problem with fish being willing to take them either. I think that the problem for me, with the bloodworm, is that I often see bloodworm pass straight through a fish (talking frozen ones here) and I just doubt that there is any nutritional value in them. I’d compare it to feeding crisps to kids all day, yes, they will eat them all day but are they good for them?

I would happily feed live bloodworm from a safe source known by me if i caught them and fed them straight to the fish but not otherwise… and the same goes for any other frozen food, whatever it is.

I’d say that that if you take a single live bloodworm, artemia, daphinia or gammarus and let it sit in a basin of water for longer than an hour, that its nutritional value has decreased significantly from how it was an hour before. So, unless the livefood has food in its belly and has not used up its energy reserve for its own needs then it is an inferior form of food.

Personally – I feed all my livefood within an hour or so before feeding them to my fish so the nutritional content is passed on to the target feeder before the “food item” has metabolised the offered food for its own uses… hope that makes sense?

Therefore, unless I can be persuaded that all frozen food companies enrich their livefood before freezing and that they are not listed as being 99% water I will not use them unless the fish in question is proving to be a real b*gg*r about eating. But I have never had this problem as a wriggling live whiteworm or Gammarus is just too much for them to resist.

The Gammarus are bred in-house by me and given a real good feed of fish food before i catch some to feed to my fish.

Matt – good question as I have seen live Artemia nauplii pass straight through a Hippocampus kuda and swim away still alive! However I then moved on to feeding them on Corophium volutator which was collected locally and fed JUST before feeding them in turn to the Hippocampus and the change in results of survivability was just amazing.

Personally I have seen the Gammarus being eaten by all fish and they just eat the shrimp of a size suitable for their mouths. The ones that are too big just take on a janitorial role in the tank of fry. I have never seen them pass through alive, or seen exoskeletal masses on the aquarium floor. The young Hyallea are about BBS sized when they first free swim.